It was six in the morning when I finally said to myself fuck it and got up off my bunk. Today was my eighteenth birthday, which meant my probation officer had no other choice but to order my release. I had been at the Juvenile Justice Center's residential program for more than two years. It could've been a lot less, but unfortunately I wasn't able to pass the GED test so I could get released early.

"Hey, girl!" Lindsay said to me as she came out of her room. She had a towel in one hand and her toothbrush in the other. She had been at the JJC just as long as me. She had a crush on one of the black boys locked up with us, so she intentionally failed the GED test just so she could stay.

"Hey there, beautiful," I told her with a huge smile on my face. Even though most of us were around the same age, all of the girls looked up to me because they all knew I was a mother and a prostitute at a very young age. One of the program's requirements was to tell our life stories to the group. I was mostly truthful about mine. Even after the group, all of the girls would come to my room and want me to tell them stories about growing up in the ghetto streets.

"Kassandra," Christina yelled. She was a female guard who always gave me a hard time. "Your probation officer sent a pass for you!"

I knew that was for the officer to hand me my walking papers, but for some reason I dreaded seeing her. All of my homegirls were clapping for me and all, but I was sad. I didn't know what was next for me back out in the world. My family was there ...

As I waited out in front of her office, I was almost in tears. Her name was Cathy Blight. She was young, blonde, maybe twenty-five years old, and she drove the coolest car in the world, a Nissan 3000 Z. I loved her and her car.

Cathy was like a mother to me. The whole time I was incarcerated at the facility, she took me to see my son, Carlton, at his foster parents' house. She taught me how to drive and dress like a lady. She would take me to nice restaurants and teach me how to eat properly. It was crazy, but what I feared most about leaving was never seeing her again.

"Hi, Kassie!" Cathy said to me as I entered her office. Her back was to me. She was bent over, looking through files, trying to find the papers for me to sign.

"Hey," I sadly said.

When she turned around and faced me, there were tears in her eyes. I jumped up and reached out to her, and she embraced me. We held each other for a few minutes, and then she said, "So, are you going to check in with me?"

"Yes!" I said without letting her go.

"You're going to get a job?"

"Yes."

She pushed me out to arm's length, still holding me so she could look in my eyes. "Kassie, I am going to miss you like crazy," she said, "but I want you to be strong out there. Now, your brother has a room set up for you at his house. I want you to take your time and not rush into anything."

"I'm scared!"

"You should be, but you're a strong girl. I think you'll be just fine."

After meeting with Cathy, I went back to give all of my things away to my friends. Lindsay and I exchanged information and promised to keep in contact with one another. The staff members and all of the girls threw me a surprise birthday party. They invited the boys from across the hall, too, which wasn't normal—the staff knew the boys tried to sneak feels and stuff on the girls—but with me going home on my birthday, they made an exception to the rules.

My brother made it on time to pick me up. He was the only one of my family members who had visited me while I was locked up. My little sister, Jackie, ended up with foster parents and moved to Florida. She wrote me a few times, but I never wrote back. I think being locked up made me bitter. Word was that she found a good mom and was living out in the country on a farm, but who knows.

"So are you ready to go?" Carlton asked me after eating a slice of my birthday cake. I was also eating cake and drinking punch. Funny how at eighteen years old, I was still enjoying cake and ice cream—maybe because growing up I only remember getting a Dilly bar and a Hostess cake for my party. My mother would use her children's birthday parties as a reason to invite over our useless aunties, just so they could get drunk and high.

"Yeah, bro, I am ready," I said, breaking from my trance.

"Bye, Kassie!" Lindsay said. She was so sweet. Here I was, dark-skinned, petite, and from the streets. She was blonde, with very nice body, and from the suburbs. Somehow we became best friends. "I will call you when I go on my next pass."

"That's fine! Call my brother's number. Be good and get your butt out of here ..."

"Okay!" Lindsay said under her breath with a pout. She always did that whenever I told her something everybody else was telling her as well. We were connected that way.

Once my brother and I finally left the building, everything changed. When I got out to the car, I saw there were already two of his homeboys sitting in the car with blunts rolled up and bottles of Bebicka vodka in the backseat waiting for me. First thing I did was kick the back of my brother's seat after I got in behind him.

"Boy, you going to get me back locked up on my first day home," I told my brother.

"Girl, chill out. You been gone for two years. I know you need a drink."

"You right, bro," I said before taking the bottle from Jeff, who was sitting next to me in the back. Then I looked over at him and realized he was a boy I had a crush on growing up but knew was too cute to take me seriously. But now I had a perm, my hair done up in a wrap. Cathy had taken me to get my nails done up in a French manicure style with her. She would always take me and Lindsay along; the two of them would get tanned up, and I always got nails and a new perm. It was crazy, because I got my first perm while locked up, so not only did I learn how to put it in perfectly by myself, I also did all of the other girls' hair for them, white and black.

I looked at myself in the mirror from the backseat, and for the first time in my life I saw myself and felt like I was beautiful. My hair was banging. I had on a skull cap with a brim on it, a North Face jacket to match, and some lip gloss that made my lips look luscious and good. I'd known I needed to check myself out from the way my brother's friends were barking at me when I walked up to the car.

"You want to go see Mama?" Bro asked me, also looking at himself in the mirror and making eye contact with me. We were so much alike, which was weird because we had different daddies, yet we were identical almost.

"Not now! She didn't come see me the whole time I was in there."

"I know, but she's still your mother," he told me protectively. "Besides, I need to go over there to bust a serve anyway."

"Bust a serve?" I asked, all too familiar with that term from the year or so I spent living from trap house to trap house with Ricky.

"You heard me!"

"I know you ain't selling that shit now, Bro?" I asked.

He never answered me. He knew I lost my baby's father to that shit. I thought to myself, silent and distant, about that night. I lost my freedom, and Ricky lost his life, and our son lost us both. A tear came into the corner of my eye, but I shook it off. Instead, I grabbed the blunt from Jeff and took a hit that caused me to choke up a storm.

As much as I wanted to relive that past nightmare in my mind, I could not. I was...